One
Whitney
The Good Girl’s Guide to Crashing Weddings,
Rule Number Six:
The bridal party is always off-limits.
June
I paused,the eyeliner poised over my lid, and blinked at my reflection in the mirror. “I don’t think I know who I am anymore.”
I took in the loose waves, subtle makeup, and flowy dress. It was all mine yet I didn’t recognize any of it.
“You’re ‘Olivia Whitney.’” The shout came from the adjoining room before Meri Mercer appeared in the doorway, her attention fixed on clasping her bracelet. “I’m ‘Emma Meriweather.’ Remember? We nailed down the backstory this morning.”
I gave myself an up-and-down glance in the mirror. This morning was a faint, foggy memory thanks to last night’s tequilashots and dancing until two a.m. My body still hadn’t fully recovered from any part of that.
Hello, thirty-five. You’re not a lot of fun.
“We talked about this. We’re teachers.” Meri dropped her hands to her hips. “Because no one ever asks a teacher to diagnose the rash on their ass in the middle of cocktail hour.”
I glanced down at the eyeliner pen. “That is true.”
“The only time I want to see someone drop their pants in front of me tonight is right before they rail me with their giant dong. Speaking of which, I went downstairs and did some reconnaissance while you were daydreaming in the shower, and I’m confident saying that tonight we will be having our beefcake and eating it too. I think we missed the turn for the wedding and ended up at a sausage convention, but I’m not mad about it.”
I turned back to the mirror to finish my lids. “Okay, great.”
She cocked her head. “Are you good?”
I caught her eye in the mirror. “What? Me? Yeah. Of course. Great. Very pleased to hear about both the beefcake and sausage.”
I’d never admit it to Meri though I was exhausted. We were seventeen days, nine different hotels, and seven crashed weddings into our three-week summer getaway, a tradition we’d started back in med school. Our annual girls’ trip had survived residencies and fellowships on opposite sides of the country, insane schedules where we could barely pull together a long weekend, and the golden shackles of intern poverty.
For the past decade, these vacations had been the best parts of my year and I knew it was the same for Meri.
It was the one time when there were no rules and we didn’t have to be all the things we’d built ourselves into. We didn’t have to be professional or mature or anything like the women we were the rest of the year. We could let go of our entire worlds and be anyone from anywhere.
And we could spend the night with whoever we wanted.
Which we did.A lot.
As was often the case with the best things, crashing the first wedding had been an accident. We’d agonized over it after the fact. Then we sent a gift from the registry and did it again. The ethics were absolutely questionable though we went to great pains to ensure we did no harm. If anything, the weddings we crashed were better because we’d been there. Whether it was waking up a sleepy table or defusing a bridesmaid fight in the bathroom, Heimliching and EpiPenning whenever the moment called for it or talking someone’s misguided boyfriend out of proposing in the middle of the toasts, we were a force of good. Chaotic good, but that had to count for something. And we gave the best—albeit anonymous—gifts. The professional food processors and the stand mixers, the high-end vacuums and the trendy luggage.
But make no mistake about it, peak summer season wedding crashing was not for the faint of heart. I had several blisters in various states of awful from dancing my ass off in ridiculous shoes, my throat was sore, and I’d burned the back of my ear on the curling iron. On top of that, I’d been mildly—or more than mildly—hungover for so long that wearing sunglasses indoors was part of my personality now.
And I couldn’t keep track of my backstory.
“Are you sure you’re okay for this? The Belwood-Ballicanta wedding is the Super Bowl of our summer. It’s the big one. I need you solid. Solid for all this sausage.” Meri was a one-woman hype squad on a normal day, but she turned into a Texas high school football coach one score away from clinching a spot at the state finals when it came to crashing weddings. She traveled with enough medical supplies to pop out my appendix in the morning and march me onto the dance floor the sameevening. “By my estimation, we’ll be literally drowning in dick so you’re going to need your wits about you.”
I frowned at her in the mirror. “Do I really want todrownin dick?”
“I do.” Meri smoothed a hand down the length of her dress and shrugged. “I just want to lie there while the beefcake buffet comes to me. Or have them wheeled over on a cart like dim sum.”
“You’re going to need to ice your vagine again if you do, and it’s your turn to drive tomorrow.”
“I can do that and drive at the same time!” She fluttered her hands like I was testing her patience. “If anyone needs dim sum dick, it’s you. All you did was dance last night.”
